Monday, September 26, 2016

The equivalent of MOVEA in all free RPG

how to movea in new rpg

There was a good question posted as a comment on the The different flavors of free format RPG post asking:

How do you move a array to field in free format. I did field1= arr1

In fixed format RPG I could use the Move Array operation code, MOVEA, to move data to and from arrays.

01  D Array           S              2    dim(10)
02  D Var1            S             20
03  D i               S              2  0

04  C     1             do        10            i
05  C                   eval      Array(i) = %char(i)
06  C                   enddo

07  C                   movea     Array         Var1
08  C                   movea     'AaBbCcDdEeFf'Array

09  C                   eval      *inlr = *on

Alas, when free format calculations came out, in 2001 as part of V5R1, MOVEA was not given a free format equivalent.

I am sure there are different approaches to achieve the same end. This is just my way to perform the equivalent of the MOVEA. I am going to give my code in all free, but I will give a fixed format version of the definitions later.

01  dcl-ds AllArray ;
02    Array char(2) dim(10) ;
03  end-ds ;

04  dcl-s Var1 char(20) ;
05  dcl-s i packed (2) ;

06  for i = 1 to %elem(Array) ;
07    Array(i) = %char(i) ;
08  endfor ;

09  Var1 = AllArray ;
10  AllArray = 'AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIi' ;

Lines 1: The array I am going to "MOVEA" needs to be in a data structure. In this example the data structure has the totally unimaginative name of AllArray.

Line 2: Here is the definition of the array. This is exactly the same way I would define a "standalone" array.

Line 3: End of the data structure.

lines 4 and 5: These are variables I will be using in this example.

Lines 6 – 8: Here I am loading the array. Rather than a Do-loop, as I did in the fixed format definition, I am using a For-loop instead. Notice how the "up to value" is coded. By using the %ELEM the For-loop will be performed the same number of times as there are elements in my array. If I was to change the number of elements in the array I would not have to change this line of code.

If I run this program in debug and place a breakpoint before the next line I can see my fully loaded array.

> EVAL array
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(1) = '1 '
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(2) = '2 '
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(3) = '3 '
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(4) = '4 '
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(5) = '5 '
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(6) = '6 '
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(7) = '7 '
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(8) = '8 '
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(9) = '9 '
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(10) = '10'

Line 9: I am moving the data structure into variable I defined on line 4. When I place a debug breakpoint before the next line of code I can see that the values of all the elements of the array have been moved to the variable:

  VAR1 = '1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10'

Line 10: This line moves values from a string into the data structure and, therefore, the array. A debug breakpoint after this line would display:

> EVAL array
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(1) = 'Aa'
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(2) = 'Bb'
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(3) = 'Cc'
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(4) = 'Dd'
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(5) = 'Ee'
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(6) = 'Ff'
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(7) = 'Gg'
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(8) = 'Hh'
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(9) = 'Ii' 
  ARRAY OF ALLARRAY(10) = '  '

And what of the fixed format equivalent definitions:

01  D AllArray        DS
02  D   Array                        2    dim(10)

03  D Var1            S             20
04  D i               S              2  0

As I have shown even though the MOVEA is gone it is simple to do the same in modern RPG.

 

This article was written for IBM i 7.3, and should work for earlier releases too.

6 comments:

  1. You could also use the build-in function %subarr. Below is a code sample.

    D ARRAYDS DS 20
    D ARY 2A DIM(10)
    D OVERLAY(ARRAYDS:1)

    D ARY2 S 2A DIM(10)

    D STR S 20A
    *******************************************************
    /FREE
    //****************************************************

    CLEAR ARY2;
    ARY2(1) = ' 1';
    ARY2(2) = ' 2';
    ARY2(3) = ' 3';
    ARY2(4) = ' 4';
    ARY2(5) = ' 5';
    ARY2(6) = ' 6';
    ARY2(7) = ' 7';
    ARY2(8) = ' 8';
    ARY2(9) = ' 9';
    ARY2(10) = '10';


    CLEAR ARRAYDS;
    ARY = %subarr(ARY2:1);
    STR = ARRAYDS;
    DSPLY STR ;

    CLEAR ARRAYDS;
    ARY = %subarr(ARY2:1:%ELEM(ARY2));
    STR = ARRAYDS;
    DSPLY STR ;

    CLEAR ARRAYDS;
    ARY = %subarr(ARY2:1:4);
    STR = ARRAYDS;
    DSPLY STR ;

    CLEAR ARRAYDS;
    ARY = %subarr(ARY2:3:4);
    STR = ARRAYDS;
    DSPLY STR ;

    CLEAR ARRAYDS;
    %subarr(ARY:3:4) = %subarr(ARY2:3:4);
    STR = ARRAYDS;
    DSPLY STR ;

    CLEAR ARRAYDS;
    %subarr(ARY:6:4) = %subarr(ARY2:3:4);
    STR = ARRAYDS;
    DSPLY STR ;


    *INLR = *ON;
    RETURN;
    //***************************************************
    /END-FREE

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice post to handle array as a whole data using Data structure - J

    ReplyDelete
  3. Here is much better solution in Form-Free

    dcl-s Array char(2) dim(10) ;

    dcl-s Var1_p pointer ;
    dcl-s Var1 char(20) based(Var1_p) ;

    Var1_p = %addr(Array) ;

    // Now Var1 is loaded with all of Array elements

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Elegant solution using the pointer and %addr BIF! Thanks.

      Delete
  4. Hello , Is there any way to write pre-runtime array in full free format?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't think there is as the FROMFILE keyword used in the definition is not supported in free format.

      Delete

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